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1992, A/T 2.5, touring; 237k miles; seems like she can't find idle and wants to rev too high, and can't seem to climb a grade very well under throttle.... i'm thinking idle air control valve. any suggestions before i get into that?

also; had a bad shimmy/shake under acceleration that went away on decel.... propshaft? wheel/tire issue? i know it needs some brake work; pulls to the right on hard braking.

i cut my teeth on 2002's some years ago, but haven't messed about with these midsize six cars until now. chalk and cheese, more or less.... discovered a huge learning curve! my old Bavaria never warned me.....

Please look through the maintenance sticky thread at the top of this list. Also, download and familiarise yourself with the Bentley manual for E34s. And finally, please check out the troubleshooting tables found at this link :

1992, A/T 2.5, touring; 237k miles; seems like she can't find idle and wants to rev too high, and can't seem to climb a grade very well under throttle.... i'm thinking idle air control valve. any suggestions before i get into that?

Very good place to start. Also check the TPS.

Quote:

also; had a bad shimmy/shake under acceleration that went away on decel.... propshaft? wheel/tire issue? i know it needs some brake work; pulls to the right on hard braking.

i cut my teeth on 2002's some years ago, but haven't messed about with these midsize six cars until now. chalk and cheese, more or less.... discovered a huge learning curve! my old Bavaria never warned me.....

Shimmy/shake under accelleration, especially in 1st gear usually points to a bad center carrier bearing in the driveshaft. This is also a good time to replace the flex guibo which could also contribute.

Check the brakes, clean the calipers, remove the slide pins if necessary, remove corrosion from pins, lube and re-install. Worst case would be caliper replacement but you can be the judge of that.

The cars are actually pretty repair friendly, parts are easy to come by new and used. Welcome to the quiet, smooth but still BMW, e34 series

thanks; i went and read through the stickys last night... which would have given me the answers i was looking for! i managed to get a new battery in today; nice to be able to start her up without popping the hood, stretching the cables, etc etc...

read the owner's manual as well; BMW don't really put much info in there... luckily the PO kept the entire packet and the radio code was present. have to crank it full volume to get any sound.... probably dead woofers, as the only sound was coming from up front.

she behaved very well today; no hunting for idle, no runaway when shifting into park... i'll try a stomp test Sunday when i have time to interpret the results. i like the fuel minder feature; amazing how often it indicates 30+ mpg (good vacuum; indicates good valves).

HAHAHA! nope, never claimed that.... just acknowledged that it was a definite improvement over hauling jumper cables around, etc...

i think a lot of the issues i was experiencing were due to the car being laid up for a while, and getting some of the kinks worked out. i definitely still need to do the stomp test and see what codes are stored.

although, it would be great PR for the battery makers if they could claim such miraculous results. not that they'd stoop to such obvious chicanery...